Genesys X

by B. J. Graf

  “Stay here for a few hours,” I said as I stood. “You’ll be safer. We’re going to take Nieto off the street. And this time he’s not getting back out.”

  Sandy Rose shook her head. “Nothing personal Detective,” she said, “But I don’t want to be anywhere near you while he’s free.” She told us she had a private plane waiting at the airport and extra security to get her there.

  I should have tried harder to convince her to stay.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Sandy Rose had barely left the interview room before I contacted the Mandarin Oriental. Her intel checked out. At twelve-fifteen the clerk at the desk told me a man who matched Nieto’s description was registered at one of their private residences under the name of Duarte.

  “Let’s go.” I waved the warrant for Nieto at Shin.

  A black and white and a heavily armed SUV were waiting in the parking lot to follow in our wake. In the first was a K-9 unit complete with sniffer dog. In the second a unit of the bomb squad. Both were instructed to keep sirens and lights off.

  As we climbed into the detective sedan, I told Shin that Nieto had been at the strip club when we’d interviewed Rose the first time. How I’d led Nieto right to Lee three weeks ago. What I didn’t say was the part that ate at me. I’d led him right to Frank as well.

  “It all fits,” Shin said.

  “How’d it go with Mrs. Lee and Raymond?” While I’d grilled Sandy Rose, Shin had interviewed the mother and son two doors down.

  “I offered Raymond a stint in rehab,” Shin said. “Not jail.”

  I nodded as my partner popped the flash-dot of the taped interview into the player.

  Built on the site of a former parking lot directly behind the former Times Mirror Building, the hotel fronted 2nd and Spring Streets. Practically across the street from Nokia PD. Drumming an anxious tattoo on the steering wheel, I cut through traffic, as we listened to the replay of Shin talking in soothing tones to Mrs. Lee and Raymond.

  Ray confirmed he’d sold three nano-botz in exchange for drugs.

  Three – I knew where the first two had turned up. One for the Clara Vista Crash that killed Raymond’s own father and Frank, and one for the Baby Mine Clinic. Where was the third? Nieto already had a long string of murders to his credit. That missing nano-bot promised a still higher body count.

  On the tape, Mrs. Lee’s strangled little whimper became wrenching guttural sobs. It was the first time I’d ever heard her cry over her husband’s death.

  It was twelve-thirty when we pulled into the parking lot of the luxury hotel where Nieto was said to be staying. I instructed the K-9 unit and bomb squad to park way in the back, well out of sight. While they got ready, Shin and I went to talk to reception.

  We took the manager up in the elevator with us.

  The sniffer dog went first. Tail in the air, he checked the outside of the 22nd floor residence for explosives. The manager stood quaking well behind us.

  At the same time the guy from the bomb squad, dressed like a window washer, reconnoitered from outside on the ledge. He loosed a robot droid to get a better visual on angles outside his view.

  “All clear,” he said.

  “All clear,” the K-9 handler echoed when the dog detected nothing.

  I gestured to the hotel manager. “Mr. Duarte?” the manager called as he inched forward from behind Shin and me and knocked on the door. “Management.” Nobody answered so he unlocked the door.

  “Police!” As the manager threw himself flat against the corridor wall, we poured past him into the room, guns out.

  We cleared the residence room by room. But no Nieto anywhere.

  About two thousand square feet, the place was one of the hotel’s smaller privately-owned residences. Per the manager, Nieto had sublet it from an owner who lived in London.

  “There are thirty similar units on site,” the manager said. “Owners like having the convenience and amenities of a hotel combined with the benefits of home.”

  I nodded. Opposite the front door and behind the sofa stretched a wall of floor to ceiling windows. A pale silvery floor rug shimmered faintly in the gloom. Furniture and effects were all standard luxury décor. Nothing personal.

  “Think he’s in the wind?” I said.

  “His clothes and stuff are back here,” Shin replied, staring at the neat row of suits hanging in the bedroom closet.

  As Shin went through the pockets, I headed back to the living room.

  Squirreled away in a sideboard, tucked behind some high-end camera equipment, sat Nieto’s phablet and a couple ghost phones. With latexed fingers I fished them out from behind the phone’s telephoto lens attachment. Setting the phablet on the dining room table, I turned it on.

  Shin came back into the living room shaking his head. “Nothing in the closet,” he said.

  But since I had Nieto’ biometric faceprint, we were able to log into his phablet without much trouble. Nieto hadn’t expected us, so the device hadn’t been wiped clean. Nieto’s recent browser history bookmarked orders he’d placed for drones. These small-scale models looked, and flew, like large dragonflies.

  “He bugged people,” Shin said. “Literally.”

  “That’s how he got the bird’s eye view on me up at Clara Vista,” I said. Nieto had been the anonymous party who sent the news station that footage of the crash.” The crash that killed Frank.

  “Triggered it too.” Shin held up the box for the nano-bot detonator. “Here’s our proof. Nieto was sitting safe miles away, piloting the drone when he engineered the crash.

  But the third bot wasn’t in the hotel suite.

  I cocked my head at the screen. “Look at the ego on this guy. News articles covering both the Ramirez shooting and the Clara Vista crash. He bookmarked them all.”

  “You got a fan, Eddie,” Shin said, reading over my shoulder. “He has a big fat file on you.”

  As Shin bagged the phones and phablet, I stood and gazed down from the living room window of Nieto’s digs to the streets below. Police Headquarters was visible from the room. So was the building that housed the new police parking lot a block away.

  Still gloved, I moved quickly back to the phablet and pulled up his camera roll of photos.

  “Need to wash my Porsche,” I said and angled the phablet so Shin’s could see the pictures.

  We both stared at the close ups of the entrance and exit for the police lot. The parking spot where my Porsche sat, a thin layer of dust on the trunk, was just visible. Nieto’s camera roll showed other shots of my car coming and going. Ditto our detective sedan. The times were all logged in.

  “Fuck me,” Shin said.

  “That’s how he kept one step ahead of us,” I said. “He kept tabs on our comings and goings.”

  “He’s laughing at us.” A look of barely muted anger had replaced Shin’s typical laid-back expression. “Fuck him.”

  Shin called in the APB and notified eye in the sky so the police choppers would be on the lookout for Nieto as well. I copied Nieto’s files onto my glove phone before forensics bagged the whole works.

  I was standing to the side of the window, angled behind the plum-grey drapes out of view, looking down at the street through Nieto’s camera when a silver Mercedes ZX-20 glided down the street. The license plate read ROSE2. It was the car he’d lifted from Sandy Rose.

  “He’s here,” I said. “Mercedes at the entrance.”

  The car slowed as Nieto prepared to pull into the underground parking garage.

  Shin called it into the black and white as we raced downstairs. He told the uniforms to stay back till Nieto was well inside, then to block his exit. We had just sprinted into the parking lot when instead of turning into a space, Nieto gunned the engine. The silver Mercedes suddenly accelerated into a U-turn.

  He must have seen, or sensed, the black and whites.

  We raced to our sedan as he cut off another car. Bam! Nieto smashed through the wooden arm of the exit barrier.

  “Hang on,”
I said.

  Shin still had one leg stuck outside when I swerved away from the cement pillar and hit the gas. Shin grabbed the overhead grip and yanked himself fully inside the car. He was still pulling his seatbelt on when we hit 65 mph. I spotted Nieto up ahead. We were closing in on Nieto’s tail two blocks from Union Station when he made an illegal left turn onto a one way street. Horns blared. Cars wove around the blur of silver we tailed. I didn’t turn with him.

  “You’re gonna lose him, Eddie,” Shin said.

  I shook my head. I’d seen the little sticker on Nieto’s back bumper – NorthStar, the satellite relayed real-time-help line that serviced certain high-end vehicles – including this model Mercedes. “Let him think he lost us.”

  I’d already called in my badge number and Nieto’s license plate when I sped past the one-way street. Circling around, I saw a blur of silver as the Mercedes shot out of the one-way street into two-way traffic again. Nieto was between us and Union Station when his car stopped cold. The NorthStar people had shut down his engine.

  Nieto didn’t take long to figure out what had happened. He threw open the door of his Mercedes and raced for Union Station on foot - his black blazer and dark jeans a blur. I almost grazed the curb in front of the entrance as I slammed on the brakes.

  “You’re faster,” Shin said. He started to climb over into the driver’s seat as I leapt out of the car and sprinted after Nieto into the train station. It was one-forty-five. Lunch hour rush – and Nieto had vanished into the crowd of commuters pushing their way under the barrel-vaulted ceiling of the central hall leading to the trains.

  I stood outside the Railz restaurant, scanning the crowd for a glimpse of the black suit jacket he wore.

  I glanced at the light board. The eight lines stopped at more than 72 stations and covered 103.1 miles of rail plus. Those slender threads span almost the entire city. All pass through Union Station. Which would Nieto take?

  That’s when I caught sight of him in the crowd at the end of the hall. Nieto had spotted me too. For just a second he stood frozen, his face a mask of anger. Then he took off in a run. I sprinted after him.

  Nieto ran towards the entrance to the Gold Line. The Line winds on elevated tracks from Union Station past Chinatown through brush-covered hills bordering Lincoln Heights before it hurls back down to ground level in Highland Park. The line ends in Pasadena where it intersects with the Green Line. Where the hell was Nieto headed?

  He climbed over the turnstile, catching the pocket of his trousers on the tangle of metal. I heard the fabric tear as he pulled away and stepped onto the train. He pushed people out of the way, moving through the car. I vaulted over the turnstile and leapt onto the train behind him.

  This car was a sardine can crammed full of commuters. I wormed my way through, following Nieto into the next car. But just as I got within ten feet of him, Nieto made it to the open doors. He leapt out of the train. I elbowed my way through the crowd. I threw myself out of the car just as the doors closed.

  He had a good lead on me. Now Nieto hurried toward the Red Line – the Metro that heads northwest through Hollywood to the Valley. I sprinted, closing the distance. Nieto’s face was red and shiny with perspiration he didn’t bother to wipe. 75, 50, 25 feet. Nieto had his foot on the top step leading into the train when I grabbed a fistful of black jacket and jerked hard. He lurched backwards.

  Nieto grabbed the pole to his left to steady himself. With his other hand he took hold of a stunned commuter and hurled him down the steps at me. I stopped the stranger’s fall with a right shoulder block. But I was blocked too. I spun back around and leapt towards the steps again, but the doors to the car had already closed.

  Through the window of the train I saw Nieto’s breath fog the window as he leaned close to the glass. He reached up with his glove phone hand and wrote something on the window. A word: MOOB. Then he tapped his phone. Nieto stared at me and smiled as the train pulled away from the station. I just had time to decipher the word: BOOM.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  “Lost him.” My call to Shin went through as I raced back out across the station. I scanned the parking lot outside Union Station for Shin and the car. “He’s on the Red Line. I think he’s got the third detonator wired already.” I told Shin what Nieto had written on the fogged glass of the train.

  “Roger that,” Shin said. “Any idea where? Or where he’s heading now?”

  I shook my head and alerted security on the Red Line.

  Nieto could have left the country days ago, but he hadn’t. That meant he had more loose ends to tie up. Sandy Rose had been one. But she was already on her way out of town. There was another loose thought. If she was still alive, Nieto would be worried about the woman whose genome started it all. He’d try to take her out too. But since I didn’t know who or where she was, there was no way to warn or protect her.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Shin said. Shin had already issued an APB and an alert at all train stations and airports. “One of the cameras will pick him up.”

  But from his expression I knew Shin was thinking what I was thinking. Before or after the next explosion?

  “Where’re you?” I said, glancing down at Shin’s face on my phone. A movie trailer flashed past on the wall outside the windows where he sat. But I knew it wasn’t the image of Batman chasing Dracula that moved. It was a Sidetrack ad -hundreds of LED lights hung over a quarter-mile span of familiar train tunnel.

  “You’re on the Gold Line?”

  “The damn train took off before I could get through the crowd,” Shin said with a sheepish frown. “Get the car. I’ll take a black and white back to Nokia.”

  But the call that went out over the police radio and web news twenty seconds later made my heart sink.

  On my glove phone I watched the footage.

  Boom was an understatement. A tower of flame burned bright against the tarmac of the Santa Monica Airport. The explosion had taken out a Mercedes and four other cars plus a parking lot attendant.

  The Mercedes’ license plate was scorched, but I could still make out the letters: ROSE-1. The car itself was now a pile of burning wreckage. A funeral pyre. For Sandy and her security guards. I wasn’t a fan of Sandy Rose, but it was a bad way to go.

  “Guess we know where that third nano-bot detonator went,” Shin said.

  I gave him a grim nod. “But where’s Nieto?”

  Metro Security still hadn’t spotted him. Back at Nokia PD, I hunkered down scrolling through the killer’s files, searching for any hint to his whereabouts.

  Shin had been right. Nieto had a fat file on me. I skimmed through the usual news stories about the Sphinx case and my promotion to Homicide Special. But Nieto’s file was much more detailed. It went as far back as public records would take him, and then some. He had a copy of my birth certificate at KP Medcenter in San Diego.

  Ping. There it was - that familiar sensation, the slight tightening of the muscles at the pit of my stomach.

  A crazy thought flickered through my mind. Nieto’s research on me would have helped him anticipate our moves, but this was over and above. Could Nieto have had more than one reason for tracking me?

  Sandy Rose had said the genome resistant to Alz-X came from a blood sample taken from her old company, the Global Baby fertility clinic. That inventory dated from 2010-2020. So the blood spot could never have come from Britney Devonshire. She hadn’t even been born. Neither had I.

  Except. My stomach did another little twist and flop as I remembered my Mom’s confession at my father’s funeral – about her IVF. Her OB-GYN had been named Singh, and Singh was the doctor implicated in the Global Baby scandal that closed the clinic. It’s a common surname, but I don’t believe in coincidence. Could my mother have been a patient at Global Baby?

  I did a quick search through Nieto’s files for the name Lagos. There it was: Calista Lagos. Her blood spot was included. I texted Jim Mar and sent him the partial prelim.

  “Who’s Calista Lagos?” Shin sai
d, looking over my shoulder.

  “My mother,” I said. “I think she’s the source genome.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  My next call was to San Diego P.D. By the time we disconnected, they were on route to pick up my mother, having assured me they would keep her safe in the downtown station. My follow up call was to Jim Mar. He’d received the blood spot from my mother and had already started on an expedited comparison with the resistant genome.

  By then the fire department had calmed the blaze at the Santa Monica Airport. Forensics had found two bodies in Sandy Rose’s Mercedes, a male and a female. Both were badly incinerated, but forensics would have positive identifications soon.

  “We got a siting on Nieto,” Shin said a moment later. “Security cameras spotted him exiting the Red Line at North Hollywood and heading into a men’s room. No sign of him exiting from there.”

  “He’s probably disguised,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Shin said. “Uniforms found the black jacket he was wearing in the men’s room trash can. We’re scanning for a facial recognition match. No matches yet.”

  We had a 3D biometric face print on Nieto, but fake teeth or even a hat and oversized glasses could still outsmart facial recognition software. Since he’d known enough to ditch the jacket, Nieto would probably have found a way to run interference on the software too.

  “The Red Line dead ends in North Hollywood,” Shin said. “That’s between two airports: Van Nuys and Burbank. We’re checking with the Orange Line and all the cab and ride share companies too. Plus car rentals.”

  The unspoken question was clear to us both. Where would Nieto go next?

  “I think I know where he’s headed,” I said and put in a call to the Genesys CEO straight away.

  Maclaren’s assistant told me the CEO was “unavailable.”

  “Make him available. Tell him Detective Piedmont thinks he’s about to get a visit from Nieto.”